biography through recipe

Spring Lamb

The tilt and turn of the earth have brought us back to where we were last year, and while that may not mean much in Fahrenheit at Latitude 21, it is finally light again when we eat dinner.

The flowers that covered my little Meyer lemon tree last May are now round, sweet fruit. They’ve been ripe for months. I left them on the branch to see if they would puff and swell and deepen to orange, the way the Meyers do on Julia’s ancient tree in the wettest corner of Nuuanu. They did puff and swell, but lingered at yellow; the tiny tree was doubled over under their weight so I’ve cut all but a few loose. Now the Charlie Brown lemon tree’s young limbs are reaching for the sky again.

I wandered over to Manoa with a bag of these to see what was cooking. Dad was grilling lamb, brushed with mustard and olive oil. Assorted backyard herbs–I think basil, marjoram or oregano, and green onions–had tiptoed into the house to make a pistou. The last bits of our CSA greens were swaying at the salad bowl’s edge, thinking about a dive.

And while the meat was on the fire, the house special (gin, six or nine ice cubes, splash of citrus, and fizz to the brim) and an amuse-bouche of curry lūʻau.

It’s been a long season since I last saw daylight slip from Diamond Head over dinner. Maybe it was the winter itself or a very full travel schedule. But it’s good to be “home again”: where one finds warm winds at his chairback and sweet lemons in the glass. Glasses and boughs raised high for a long summer.